The apostrophe: It's a real problem

School started today. And you know what that means? I can begin taking off points for errors in punctuation. Ahhh, the life of a copy editor is never boring.

I was reading the student paper this morning. Don't get me wrong -- The Mirror is a wonderful news source. The layout looks really good, and the news is usually interesting and informative. But I found two apostrophe errors in one graphic in today's edition. I wonder if graphics are even edited at some papers.

Here's the problem I found: The person-on-the street graphic, which contains photos and short quotes, contained two misspellings of the word "it's."

Here's the rule: You need an apostrophe when you mean "it is." You don't need an apostrophe when you use the possessive "its," which means "it belongs to something or someone."

Correct Examples:
I wish the university had its own bus line. (The bus line would belong to the university.)
It's a pain driving around campus for a meeting. (It is a pain ....)

A few pages later, I saw another apostrophe mistake. The headline at the top of the page read "Fall movie's offer wide variety." UGH!
Here's the rule: Don't use an apostrophe to make a plural. It should read "Fall movies offer ...."